Statement by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas, Nov. 8.
In the imperialist era Jew-hatred, which has existed for millennia, becomes an essential tool for the ruling capitalist class to maintain power as working-class struggles grow amid deepening crisis conditions.
Class relations under capitalist rule are based on the exploitation of the vast majority of working people by the propertied few. This breeds working-class resistance. The social catastrophes and wars endemic to this dog-eat-dog system draw workers into politics and, over time, will lead to revolutionary struggle.
Ukrainian resistance to Moscow’s genocidal war against both their country and people and Israel’s efforts to destroy the capacity of Tehran and Hamas to launch further bloody pogroms are drawing workers there and elsewhere into politics.
In crisis conditions the capitalist rulers must have someone to scapegoat. Jew-hatred is the banner of the reactionary thugs they turn to. The cost for humanity was laid bare by the Holocaust systematically carried out by the Nazi regime in Germany. Its aim was to annihilate the Jewish people across Europe. The rulers in Tehran and their allies in Hamas openly say their goal is to wipe out all Jews in Israel, to repeat the pogrom Hamas carried out Oct. 7 until they succeed.
Fighting to prevent this from happening again is crucial for the working class. The horrors of the 20th century do not have to be repeated, but only if the working class succeeds in building parties of its own with a leadership capable of mobilizing millions to take political power. Defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews is a key part of that struggle.
Israel’s existence became inevitable as a result of three pivotal developments:
Counterrevolutionary Stalinist parties in Moscow and across Europe betrayed promising developing revolutionary opportunities in Germany, France and Spain in the 1930s, as well as in Greece and Italy after the defeat of the Nazis. Had workers been led to take power, Jews would have found refuge and opportunities everywhere.
The Nazi Holocaust, the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews — 40% of the world’s entire Jewish population.
The criminal actions of the democratic imperialist powers, by the governments in Washington and London, who slammed shut their doors to Jews before, during and after World War II. More Jews saw no alternative but to look to what would become Israel.
In sharp contrast to the defeats led by the Stalinists, working people in Cuba, led by Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army, showed it is possible to make a socialist revolution and to defend it against all odds. Emulating what Castro and the cadre he led did is needed more than ever, in the U.S. and across the globe. It requires building proletarian parties immersed in the class struggle today, forged with the discipline and audacity to lead the fight to overturn capitalist rule, to defend workers’ conquest of power with all our might and to join the struggle for a socialist future.